REVIEW: ‘RWBY: Ice Queendom,’ Episode 8 – “Where You Belong”

RWBY: Ice Queendom is an action/fantasy anime produced by Shaft. With the Sillies overrunning the city and Weiss’s iron-clad control seemingly slipping, it looks like Team RWBY’s latest attempt to free their comrade might be just a couple of steps away from success. But looks can be deceiving in RWBY: Ice Queendom Episode 8.

Coming into this week’s episode, the one thing I had hoped was for the story to be closer to finishing the series’ current arc than it had been when it started. But it couldn’t even deliver that. Rather than provide a significant push forward like last week’s cliffhanger implied it might, RWBY: Ice Queendom Episode 8 continues to resist any progress in its narrative just as hard as Weiss fights her friends’ help in the story itself. I appreciate the series wanting to impart a true sense of difficulty within the plot. Still, as it piles more obstacles and roadblocks in front of the protagonists, this presentation of hardship fails to bring a sense of challenge and instead continues to be a detriment to the show itself.

Despite introducing even more hurdles to climb, this episode introduces elements that feel important to what will ultimately be the story’s conclusion. These moments did leave me curious to see how and learn why these elements are so important.

Beyond the team’s continuing efforts to save Weiss, RWBY: Ice Queendom Episode 8‘s other major plot point centers on Ruby herself. As the battle goes from bad to worse, Ruby struggles with how she sees herself and Team RWBY as a whole. Given how the team’s first mission has struggled so hard so far, it feels completely understandable that Ruby would be entertaining these feelings. But even these moments are tainted by the sense of repetition that has fallen over the entire show. Ruby’s attitude toward herself this whole arc has risen and fallen with her mission’s apparent successes and very real failures.

The brightest point in this episode’s continued slog through Weiss’s dream is Juane. Free of the internal group drama that has come to weight down Team RWBY’s members, the side character provides lots of positive energy and what little forward momentum the episode manages to exhibit. Despite suffering the same setbacks as the rest of the group, Juane soldiers on without the angst weighing down the series’ core cast.

While the narrative continues to flounder, the visuals for RWBY: Ice Queendom Episode 8 bring all of the plot’s beleaguered moments to life. The few new elements that this episode introduces are handled competently, and the visuals always keep the story’s events clear as the viewer is once more taken from plot beat to beat.

When all is said and done, RWBY: Ice Queendom Episode 8 continues to suffer from most of the same problems that brought down the last couple of episodes. The show’s unwillingness to let the plot move forward not only hurts the larger narrative but even dampens anything new the series attempts to do within it.

RWBY: Ice Queendom Episode 8 is streaming now on Crunchyroll.